Selfish Knitting

As a group, knitters often encounter social demands upon their knitting skills. People ask for a handknit without realizing the amount of time and skill involved. Other people look upon handknits as something cheap and don’t even thank a knitter when presented with a handmade.

The group shares hilarious stories about these encounters and tries to support each other in learning to say no to requests without feeling bad about it.

As a society, especially America, people (women) are still trained to oblige to every request that is thrown in their direction. They consider ‘no’ an impolite answer. When really, ‘no’ is just the other side of the coin a person flips up when making a request.

“can you knit me a bedspread?” “is the moon made of cheese?” “do you love your mother?” these are all questions that can easily be answered with ‘no’ of ‘yes’ without revealing anything about the persons involved.

To say no requires practice and mental fortification though and the group is all about that. And about how it’s allright to change your mind once you’ve said ‘yes’ in a reflex.

I do not get requests often. But I am a victim of selfish knitting….. the knitting itself is selfish!

look at this:

I’m just kitchenering up this shawl….Doing a really good job too, I might say. But see my problem?

grrrrr! special handdyed one of a kind beautiful yarn! not enough of it!

so. I picked up a piece of yarn in the colour red to match the reds in the yarn. Kitchenerd to the end. Washed the shawl to block it….and….

I hate knitting. Knitting hates me.

yesterday I felted my Kelmscott cardigan into a childsize…. I’ll tell about that when I’ve found and devoured a big chocolate cake to soothe my throat that is raw with yelling NO NO NOOOOOOOOO!